6. Especially unmerciful landlords are the common and sore oppressors of the countrymen: if a few men can but get money enough to purchase all the land in a country, they think that they may do with their own as they list, and set such hard bargains of it to their tenants, that they are all but as their servants, yea, and live a more troublesome life than servants do: when they have laboured hard all the year, they can scarce scrape up enough to pay their landlord's rent; their necessities are so urgent, that they have not so much as leisure to pray morning or evening in their families, or to read the Scriptures, or any good book; nor scarce any room in their thoughts for any holy things: their minds are so distracted with necessities and cares, that even on the Lord's day, or at a time of prayer, they can hardly keep their minds intent upon the sacred work which they have in hand. If the freest minds have much ado to keep their thoughts in seriousness and order, in meditation, or in the worshipping of God; how hard must it needs be to a poor oppressed man, whose body is tired with wearisome labours, and his mind distracted with continual cares, how to pay his rent, and how to have food and raiment for his family! How unfit is such a troubled, discontented person, to live in thankfulness to God, and in his joyful praises! Abundance of the voluptuous great ones of the world, do use their tenants and servants but as their beasts, as if they had been made only to labour and toil for them, and it were their chief felicity to fulfil their will, and live upon their favour.
_Direct._ I. The principal means to overcome this sin, is to understand the greatness of it. For the flesh persuadeth carnal men to judge of it according to their selfish interest, and not according to the interest of others, nor according to the true principles of charity and equity; and so they justify themselves in their oppression.
1. _Consid._ That oppression is a sin not only contrary to christian charity and self-denial, but even to humanity itself. We are all made of one earth, and have souls of the same kind: there is as near a kindred betwixt all mankind, as a specifical identity; as between one sheep, one dove, one angel, and another: as between several drops of the same water, and several sparks of the same fire; which have a natural tendency to union with each other. And as it is an inhuman thing for one brother to oppress another, or one member of the same body to set up a proper interest of its own, and make all the rest, how painfully soever, to serve that private interest; so it is for those men who are children of the same Creator. Much more for them who account themselves members of the same Redeemer, and brethren in Christ by grace and regeneration, with those whom they oppress. Mal. ii. 10, "Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?" If we must not lie to one another, because we are members one of another, Eph. iv. 25; and if all the members must have the same care of one another, 1 Cor. xii. 25; surely then they must not oppress one another.
2. An oppressor is an antichrist and an antigod: he is contrary to God, who delighteth to do good, and whose bounty maintaineth all the world; who is kind to his enemies, and causeth his sun to shine and his rain to fall on the just and on the unjust: and even when he afflicteth doth it as unwillingly, delighteth not to grieve the sons of men.[166] He is contrary to Jesus Christ, who gave himself a ransom for his enemies, and made himself a curse to redeem them from the curse, and condescended in his incarnation to the nature of man, and in his passion to the cross and suffering which they deserved: and being rich and Lord of all, yet made himself poor, that we by his poverty might be made rich. He endured the cross and despised the shame, and made himself as of no reputation, accounting it his honour and joy to be the Saviour of men's souls, even of the poor and despised of the world. And these oppressors live as if they were made to afflict the just, and to rob them of God's mercies, and to make crosses for other men to bear, and to tread on their brethren as stepping-stones of their own advancement. The Holy Ghost is the Comforter of the just and faithful. And these men live as if it were their calling to deprive men of their comfort.